RIT’s Cary Graphic Arts Press Publishes Book on PAETEC Communications

IT’S THE PEOPLE, STUPID.
Live by that slogan, and you can get elected to office, run a corner grocery, throw a great dinner party—and even grow a $500 million telecom with a little help from your friends.
It’s how we grew PAETEC.

—It Isn’t Just Business, It’s Personal

The barometer of “making it” in the business world today is to excel long enough to record your success. So it’s good timing for the CEO of Rochester-based PAETEC Corporation, Arunas A. Chesonis, who collaborated with business writer and novelist David Dorsey, to release a tell-all book—It Isn’t Just Business, It’s Personal: How PAETEC Thrived When All the Big Telecoms Couldn’t.

It Isn’t Just Business . . . kicks off the First Person Corporate Profile Series for Cary Graphic Arts Press at Rochester Institute of Technology.

The book’s foreward, written by RIT President Albert Simone, reflects on Chesonis as an entrepreneur, community leader and RIT trustee. Last April, RIT’s E. Philip Saunders College of Business named Chesonis as recipient of the 2006 Herbert W. Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award.

“That balance between being part of the human race and serving and working with people, while at the same time maintaining loyalty to their own individuality so that originality and uniqueness can come to the fore, is a formula for success. It is the formula for PAETEC’s success,” Simone says.

With win-win principles on PAETEC philosophy, Chesonis’s book resonates with other bestsellers on the Amazon.com hit list: L. L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon with CEO Leon Gorman; and Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbuck’s Built a Company One Cup at a Time with CEO Howard Schultz.

Chesonis believes his people-first philosophy is the key to his company’s success. “One thing hasn’t changed since Day One,” says Chesonis. “We continue to value people before quick profit. Our mission is to be the most employee- and customer- oriented telecom in the industry. The book is for business people who are looking for a new way to operate with a focus on the importance of personal connections among employees, customers, and suppliers.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Arunas A. Chesonis serves as Chairman of the Board and CEO of PAETEC Corporation. He began his career at Rochester Telephone Corporation, now part of Citizens Communications Company, and went on to serve as President of ACC Corp. from 1994 until 1998. He holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester. David Dorsey is the author of The Force, which was selected as one of the ten best business books of the year by BusinessWeek. He is also author of The Cost of Living, a novel, and has contributed to magazines such as Fast Company, Worth, Inc., and Esquire.